Theater review: 'The Maids' at Mad Cow Theatre

There's something wrong in "The Maids," the Jean Genet thriller onstage at Mad Cow Theatre. It's wrong in that way one says, "That's so wrong!" about something oddly outside the norm.

What's wrong is the way two sisters, both maids to a self-absorbed mistress, role-play elaborate fantasies about love, domination and murder, seemingly giving themselves and each other sexual thrills. It's the way the mistress treats the two like playthings for her amusement, also showing a propensity to touch them provocatively. It's all just, well, wrong.

Unfortunately, something also goes wrong in another sense in Mad Cow's production, which doesn't set the stakes high enough to make this depraved stroll through a series of mind games engrossing enough. There's no sense of real danger, not enough feeling that the women's bizarre games are damaging their psyches.

And without that tension, Genet's talky play wilts like a faded rose.

Even a murder attempt — will Madame drink her poisoned tea? — becomes a wan farce of cup up, cup down instead of a gripping sequence.

Genet's play sets up the two maids as outsiders, wanting to inhabit Madame's world of makeup, velvet gowns and furs. They hate her, yet simultaneously worship her. They've framed her Monsieur for theft so he has been sent to jail, though their precise motive remains unclear — jealousy of the attention he gets from Madame, perhaps?

For her part, Madame is regally fixated on herself. Even as she declares herself in agony over her lover's arrest, her thoughts are never far from her own fancies. "How can one think of clothes and furs when he's in prison," she exhorts — all the while trying on a coquettish black hat, adjusting its stylish veil, examining her perfectly made-up face in a mirror.

Each woman in director Christine Robison's three-person cast makes the most of Genet's theatrical dialogue.

Marion C. Marsh gives a bravura performance when her character, the maid Claire, pretends to be Madame. That disappears when she shrinks back into anxious, long-faced Claire — though it's hard to view her as fragile enough for her character's final action.

Mia Reeves, as her sister Solange, comes into her own when she lets her hair down, figuratively and literally.

Jamie-Lyn Hawkins sweeps across the stage as Madame, slipping in and out of various permutations of a vaguely Gallic accent but always commanding attention.

Sound design, by John Valines, consists of periodic music underscoring the action that then abruptly cuts out before the melody reaches its climax.

It's aptly symbolic of this production, which never quite hits its emotional high notes.

Matthew J. Palm can be reached at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5038. Read his Orlando Theater Blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/theaterblog.

See for yourself

•What: 'The Maids,' a Mad Cow Theatre Company production of a thriller by Jean Genet

•When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 24. Also, pay-what-you-wish show 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20. (Order tickets online for that show for $15, or pay what you wish at the door.)